Category: South East England

South East Eng­land

TOTALitarian Oil Out of Burma — demos this week

This Sat­ur­day (24 Novem­ber) is the UK-wide “TOTAL Out of Bur­ma” Day of Action, sup­port­ed by Bur­ma Cam­paign UK.

Total 24 NovemberThis Sat­ur­day (24 Novem­ber) is the UK-wide “TOTAL Out of Bur­ma” Day of Action, sup­port­ed by Bur­ma Cam­paign UK.

There are 16 con­firmed protests, with sev­er­al more await­ing con­fir­ma­tion. It’s not too late to organ­ise your own protest. Or you can join one or more of the protests list­ed below. And in Lon­don there will be a protest finale at the Total sta­tion on Maryle­bone Road (near Bak­er Street tube) from 4pm til 6pm, after which there will be a par­ty. All are wel­come.

And don’t for­get our week­ly protests on Wednes­day and Thurs­day.

**This week only there will be an addi­tion­al protest on WEDNESDAY EVENING at WEMBLEY PARK TOTAL GARAGE, to coin­cide with the Eng­land v Croa­t­ia foot­ball match at Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um**.

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UPCOMING PROTESTS

Wednes­day 21 Novem­ber
8.30am — 10.30am
Protest at Total Oil HQ, 33 Cavendish Square, Lon­don W1G 0PW
near­est tube: Oxford Cir­cus
map: http://tinyurl.com/2oardl

Wednes­day 21 Novem­ber
5.30pm — 7.30pm
Protest at Wem­b­ley Park Total petrol sta­tion, Bridge Road, Wem­b­ley, Lon­don
near­est tube: Wem­b­ley Park

Direc­tions: Turn right at the bot­tom of the steps out of Wem­b­ley Park tube (Met­ro­pol­i­tan line, 20 min­utes from Bak­er St) onto the main road (Bridge Road). The Total garage is high­ly vis­i­ble straight ahead, on the big traf­fic island oppo­site the retail park — 3 min­utes walk.

Thurs­day 22 Novem­ber
5.00pm — 7.00pm
Protest at Total petrol sta­tion, Dorset House, 170–172 Maryle­bone Rd, Lon­don NW1 5AR
near­est tube: Bak­er Street
map: http://tinyurl.com/2zg4qf

Sat­ur­day 24 Novem­ber
TOTAL OUT OF BURMA NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION

A day of action around the UK call­ing for Total Oil to stop fund­ing the Burmese mil­i­tary regime and pull out of Bur­ma. Protests are being organ­ised at petrol sta­tions around the UK. For an up-to-date list of protest loca­tions, con­tact details and details of how to organ­ise your own protest, go to
http://totaloutofburma.blogspot.com.

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1. Con­firmed protests on Sat 24 Nov
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BRADFORD
Vig­il against Total
5pm-7pm
meet at Cen­te­nary Square, Brad­ford

BRIGHTON
Kemp Town Total sta­tion
Meet at the Pavil­lion Bus Stop at 11.30am

GUERNSEY
Protests will be hap­pen­ing at Total sta­tions across the island.
con­tact: Kev on burma@landofkev.com or 07911 770 017

LONDON — Bak­er Street
4pm-6pm
Dorset House Total sta­tion, 170–172 Maryle­bone Rd, West­min­ster NW1 5AR
near­est tube: Bak­er Street
con­tact: totaloutofburma@gmail.com
(note: this is the final Lon­don protest of the day — all wel­come, with a par­ty to fol­low)

LONDON — Cam­den
from 11.30am
Cam­den Town Total sta­tion, 109–113 York Way, Isling­ton N7 9QE
near­est tube: Cale­don­ian Rd or Ken­tish Town
con­tact: Jonathan on jjjstevenson@fastmail.fm or 07818 651 124

LONDON — Chiswick
2pm-4pm
West Four Total station,137 Chiswick High Road, Chiswick W4 2ED
near­est tube: Turn­ham Green
con­tact: totaloutofburma@gmail.com

LONDON — Ham­mer­smith
11am-2pm
Raven Total sta­tion, 372 Gold­hawk Road, Ham­mer­smith W6 0XF
near­est tube: Stam­ford Brook
con­tact: totaloutofburma@gmail.com

LONDON — Ken­sal Green
1pm-3pm
Ken­sal Total sta­tion, 904 Har­row Rd, Ken­sal Green NW10 5JU
con­tact: Steph at fifth_state@yahoo.co.uk

LONDON — Kil­burn
12.30pm‑1.45pm
Kil­burn Total sta­tion, 409 Kil­burn High Rd, Kil­burn NW6 7QG
near­est tube: Kil­burn
con­tact: Dan at dvies­nik [at] yahoo.co.uk

LONDON — Manor Park
1pm- 3pm
Manor Park Total sta­tion, 893 Rom­ford Rd, East Ham E12 5JT
near­est tube: East Ham or (rail) Manor Park
con­tact: Paul on paul@riseup.net or 07939 975 085

LONDON — Newham
10.30am-12.30pm
High St North Total sta­tion, 409–419 High St North, Newham E12 6TL
near­est tube: East Ham
con­tact: Paul on paul@riseup.net or 07939 975 085

LONDON — South­wark
2pm-4pm
Thomas Beck­ett Total sta­tion, 233–247 Old Kent Road, South­wark SE1 5LU
near­est tube: Ele­phant & Cas­tle or Bor­ough
con­tact: Danae on papakura2000@hotmail.com or 07731 956 415

LONDON — Whitechapel
10am-12noon
Val­lance Total sta­tion, 112 Val­lance Rd, Tow­er Ham­lets E1 5BW
near­est tube: Whitechapel
con­tact: Danae on papakura2000@hotmail.com or 07731 956 415

LONDON — Willes­den
11am-12.15pm
Willes­den Lane Total sta­tion, 290 Willes­den Lane, Willes­den NW2 5HS
near­est tube: Willes­den Green
con­tact: Dan at dvies­nik [at] yahoo.co.uk

OXFORD
from 9.30am
Cow­ley Total sta­tion, 44 Gars­ing­ton Road, Cow­ley, Oxford OX4 2LG
con­tact: Den­nis at dhambridge@btinternet.com or 07804 433 602

ST ALBANS
meets out­side Bar­clays Bank, St Peters Street at 11am
mov­ing on to Total garage tbc at 12noon.
con­tact: totaloutofburma@gmail.com

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2. Protests to be con­firmed
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LONDON — Bermond­sey
LONDON — Haringey
LONDON — Peck­ham
LONDON — Waltham For­est
MANCHESTER
WREXHAM

If you inter­est­ed in attend­ing any of these protests please email totaloutofburma@gmail.com

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3. Details of how to get involved
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There are two ways to take part in the day of action:

1. Join a garage protest (see list above). You can get in touch with the con­tact list­ed or you can just turn up on the day and offer your sup­port. As protests are con­firmed we’ll add them to the blog: http://www.totaloutofburma.blogspot.com.

2. Organ­ise your own action — there are sev­er­al hun­dred TOTAL petrol sta­tions in the UK to choose from. Fol­low these three easy steps:

a. Find out where your local TOTAL garage is by using the handy Ser­vice Sta­tion Find­er at http://www.total.co.uk or check the google map of UK TOTAL garages being cre­at­ed at http://tinyurl.com/2ftvdf.

b. Get some sim­ple visu­al mate­ri­als togeth­er, plus some leaflets or peti­tions, and pub­li­cise it to your friends, con­tacts and local press. If you want the details list­ed pub­licly (e.g. by email and on the blog) email them to totaloutofburma@gmail.com or call Paul on 07939 975 085.

c. Hold the protest! Take some pic­tures, post a report on Indymedia.org.uk and send the link to totaloutofburma@gmail.com. Plus write to TOTAL’s head office telling them what you’ve been up to.

Basic plac­ard designs, peti­tions, leaflets and a mod­el press release are down­load­able from: http://www.totaloutofburma.blogspot.com.

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For more infor­ma­tion go to:
http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total.html
http://totaloutofburma.blogspot.com
Join the face­book group: “Get Total Oil out of Bur­ma”

Fur­ther Infor­ma­tion
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Total out of Bur­ma blog
http://totaloutofburma.blogspot.com

Face­book group — Get Total Oil out of Bur­ma
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6833508763

Bur­ma Cam­paign UK’s info on Total Oil
http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total.html

Thanks again for sup­port­ing the call to get Total Oil out of Bur­ma.

300 on the streets of Helsinki for squat Elimäki — International Days Of Action For Squats & Autonomous Spaces — April 08

Helsin­ki, Fin­land: We get more time – 300 on the streets of Helsin­ki for squat Elimä­ki

Thurs­day was a day of vic­to­ry for the squat­ting scene in Helsin­ki. 300 peo­ple defied the real­ly shit­ty weath­er and gath­ered to demon­strate at the Youth Depart­ment of the city to show their sup­port to the social cen­tre Elimä­ki, aka squat E15.

Helsin­ki, Fin­land: We get more time – 300 on the streets of Helsin­ki for squat Elimä­ki

Thurs­day was a day of vic­to­ry for the squat­ting scene in Helsin­ki. 300 peo­ple defied the real­ly shit­ty weath­er and gath­ered to demon­strate at the Youth Depart­ment of the city to show their sup­port to the social cen­tre Elimä­ki, aka squat E15.

The Youth Depart­ment of Helsin­ki had gath­ered to decide on whether to rent the squat­ted house on Elimäenkatu (Elimäk­istreet) to be used as a social cen­tre for the youth of the city. This was the sec­ond time offi­cials from the city came togeth­er to decide on the issue. After post­pon­ing the deci­sion at their first meet­ing a month ago the board now unan­i­mous­ly decid­ed to inves­ti­gate the real con­di­tion of our house. The deci­sion can be under­stood as an offi­cial recog­ni­tion of the impor­tance to have an autonomous space in Helsin­ki.

The house on Elimäenkatu has been deemed in very bad con­di­tion by the offi­cials of the city. The state­ment has been sup­port­ed by no real mea­sure­ments or data what­so­ev­er and on the con­trary been proved wrong by the inves­ti­ga­tions we our­selves have made. This fact got rec­og­nized by the board of the Youth Depart­ment in their deci­sion to appoint a pri­vate con­struc­tion firm to inves­ti­gate fur­ther on the mat­ter.

The solu­tion that the squat­ters and some peo­ple from the city have been work­ing on is to have the house rent­ed by the Youth Depart­ment to be used as an autonomous social cen­tre. The house has been in this use since it was squat­ted in the begin­ning of August. After a long peri­od of bad events on our issue the out­look is now bet­ter. But it would be overt­ly opti­mistic to say that if the inves­ti­ga­tions on our house turn out to be good the city would sup­port us. Dur­ing the last months the politi­cians and offi­cials of the city have been chang­ing their state­ments on whether to legalise the house or not on a dai­ly basis. The Finnish media does not fol­low the game in the side-scenes where politi­cians and offi­cials are manip­u­lat­ing each oth­er to top­ple our project. We are far from secur­ing the only social cen­tre in Helsin­ki but much clos­er than before.

How­ev­er the sit­u­a­tion of Squat E15 devel­ops the squat­ting scene in Helsin­ki and oth­er Finnish cities is now stronger than ever before. We are con­stant­ly grow­ing in num­bers and a sup­port demo of 300 peo­ple (or more) is more than we ever could have mus­tered half a year ago. We now have recog­ni­tion for our needs and will not give up until we have this house or an equal­ly good place guar­an­teed to us. Last but not least the inter­na­tion­al sup­port we have been get­ting (Ghent, Copen­hagen, Ams­ter­dam, Tallinn and Malmö as far as we know) means a lot to a small
but grow­ing scene like ours. The strug­gle for free spaces con­tin­ues!

Love and sol­i­dar­i­ty
Social cen­tre Elimä­ki
www.valtaus.org

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Squat action days flierOn Fri­day the 4th and Sat­ur­day the 5th of April 2008, we call for two days of demon­stra­tion, direct action, pub­lic infor­ma­tion, street-par­ty, squat­ting… in defence of free spaces and for an anti-cap­i­tal­ist pop­u­lar cul­ture. Through these two days, we want to help cre­ate more vis­i­bil­i­ty of autonomous spaces and squats as a european/global polit­i­cal move­ment. We want to devel­op inter­con­nec­tions and sol­i­dar­i­ty between squats and autonomous spaces. We want to keep link­ing our spaces with new peo­ple and new strug­gles, and sup­port the cre­ation of autonomous spaces in places where there has not been a his­to­ry of this kind of action. We want to build, step by step, our abil­i­ty to over­come the wave of repres­sion falling on us.

We call for decen­tralised and autonomous actions of all kinds, depend­ing on what peo­ple feel to be the most appro­pri­ate to their local con­text. You’ll find below the polit­i­cal con­tent we wish to give to these two days.

= We are every­where…

For cen­turies, peo­ple have used squats and autonomous spaces, either urban or rur­al, to take con­trol of their own lives. They are a tool, a tac­tic, a prac­tice, and a way for peo­ple to live out their strug­gles. For decades, squat move­ments across Europe and beyond have fought cap­i­tal­ist devel­op­ment, con­tribut­ing to local strug­gles against destruc­tion; pro­vid­ing alter­na­tives to prof­it-mak­ing and con­sumer cul­ture; run­ning social cen­tres and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry activ­i­ties out­side of the main­stream econ­o­my. Demon­strat­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties for self-organ­is­ing with­out hier­ar­chy; cre­at­ing inter­na­tion­al net­works of exchange and sol­i­dar­i­ty. These net­works have changed many lives, break­ing out of social con­trol and pro­vid­ing free spaces where peo­ple can live out­side the norm.

Among oth­er things, these places pro­vide bases for meet­ings and projects, for the cre­ation and dis­tri­b­u­tion of sub­ver­sive cul­ture, for the non-mon­e­tary based exchange of goods, resources and knowl­edge, for exper­i­men­tat­ing with new ways of liv­ing, for col­lec­tive debates, for recy­cling and con­struc­tion, for agri­cul­tur­al activ­i­ties, for the pro­duc­tion of inde­pen­dant media.

Whether we speak of urban squats or of pur­chased land, of nego­ti­at­ed or re-appro­pri­at­ed rur­al land, of restored fac­to­ries or self-built build­ings, these spaces are refuges for rebels and out­laws, poor and home­less peo­ple, rad­i­cal activists, ille­gal immi­grants. Social cen­tres are cru­cial to us as part of a move­ment for social change.

= All over Europe, repres­sive agen­das are being pushed by gov­ern­ments

They are attack­ing long-stand­ing autonomous spaces such as the Ung­domshuset in Copen­hagen, Koepi and Rigaer Straße in Berlin, EKH in Vien­na and Les Tan­ner­ies in Dijon, squat­ted social cen­tres in Lon­don and Ams­ter­dam, Ifanet in Thes­sa­loni­ki, etc. In France, squats have become a pri­or­i­ty tar­get for the police after the anti-CPE move­ment and the wave of actions and riots that hap­pened dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions peri­od. In Ger­many, many autonomous spaces have been searched and attacked before the G8 sum­mit. In Gene­va and Barcelona, two old and big squat­ting “fortress­es”, the author­i­ties have decid­ed to try to put an end to the move­ment. Where­as it is still pos­si­ble to occu­py emp­ty build­ings in some coun­tries, it has already become a crime in some oth­ers. In the coun­try­side, access to land is becom­ing hard­er and com­munes face increas­ing prob­lems from leg­is­la­tion on hygiene, secu­ri­ty and gen­tri­fi­ca­tion by the bour­geoisie and tourists. All over Europe, inde­pen­dent cul­tures are being threat­ened.

Sev­er­al months ago we saw run­ning bat­tles in the streets of Copen­hagen and actions every­where in Europe in an explo­sion of anger at the evic­tion of the Ung­domshuset social cen­tre. Since then, and with a few oth­er big resis­tance sto­ries that hap­pened over the last months, we’ve man­aged to renew the mean­ing of inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty.

We are moti­vat­ed by the same pas­sions, we feel the same deter­mi­na­tion, face a com­mon ene­my in repres­sion, and are unit­ed across bor­ders by our desire to build a world of equal­i­ty and self-deter­mi­na­tion. As unaligned and ungovern­able islands of uncon­trolled free­dom we want to con­tin­ue to act in sol­i­dar­i­ty, and strength­en our inter­na­tion­al links, no mat­ter how many kilo­me­tres there are between us.

= Issues beyond the actions

We also would like these days of actions to enable and inspire dis­cus­sion, to demon­strate var­i­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties & strate­gies, to be an occa­sion to share skills. These are some of the issues we would like to push:
* what do we expect from and under­stand by autonomous spaces?
* What is their role in the pur­suit of rad­i­cal social change?
* Where do they lie on the scale of’al­ter­na­tive’ to ‘con­fronta­tion­al’?
* share infor­ma­tion on the range of activ­i­ties that take place in autonomous social spaces along with ideas for how to make them work;
*ques­tion the pro­duc­tion of goods and ser­vices; and encour­age the exchange of knowl­edge par­tic­u­lar­ly between the town and the coun­try­side.
* share expe­ri­ences, inspire each oth­er, find out how oth­ers live col­lec­tive­ly, and their activ­i­ties, alter­na­tive eco­nom­ic exchange sys­tems…
* share var­i­ous ways of get­ting spaces all over europe: ille­gal occu­pa­tions, Do It Your­self con­struc­tions, wagen­burgs, buy­ing col­lec­tive­ly, free con­tracts…
* share prac­ti­cal resources and a feel­ing of sol­i­dar­i­ty between:
dif­fer­ent users of autonomous spaces (either cur­rent or poten­tial): co-oper­a­tives, peo­ple with­out papers, activists, trav­ellers, immi­grants, urban­ites, rur­al dwellers, small farms;
dif­fer­ent ways of using spaces; activ­i­ties for the com­mu­ni­ty, meet­ing area for groups, liv­ing spaces;
* enable the form­ing of com­mon strate­gies when faced with state repres­sion or evic­tion;

= Who are we, how can we col­lab­o­rate on this project, and make it hap­pen?

At the moment, we are a group of peo­ple involved with var­i­ous autonomous spaces around Europe, who decid­ed to start dis­cussing this call. We’ll meet var­i­ous col­lec­tives in the com­ing months and see how peo­ple feel about this pro­pos­al for euro­pean days of action, and how they want to get involved. Its suc­cess depends a lot on our capac­i­ty to cre­ate a big­ger inter­na­tion­al work­ing group. This would mean every­body who want­ed to take part into it would try to start disc­ss­ing the idea in var­i­ous spaces, cre­at­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing some pro­pa­gan­da mate­ri­als and net­work­ing infor­ma­tion about what’s going on near them dur­ing those days. We would also like to orga­nize a phys­i­cal meet­ing about all this in the upcom­ing months. Get in touch!

= Mate­ri­als

Fly­ers etc can be found on our web­site. Please down­load the PDF file, print it and spread it around squats and autonomous spaces in your area.

= Prepa­ra­tion meet­ing

The suc­cess of this call now depends upon our capac­i­ty to cre­ate a big­ger inter­na­tion­al work­ing group. The whole event will hap­pen with­out any “cen­tral com­mi­tee”, and will be made of a var­i­ous autonomous decen­tralised actions. Still, we think it is impor­tant to have a phys­i­cal meet­ing, in order to exchange ideas and strate­gies, dis­cuss the con­tents of the call, see how to cre­ate com­mon infor­ma­tion tools around that project, how to con­nect and help the var­i­ous local ini­tia­tives.
Thus, we’re call­ing for an inter­na­tion­al prepa­ra­tion & coor­di­na­tion meet­ing on Novem­ber 24th & 25th 2007, in the autonomous space “Les Tan­ner­ies”, locat­ed in Dijon, France. It is a squat­ted social cen­tre in a post-indus­tri­al envi­ron­ment, occu­pied since 1998. Thanks to years of strug­gle against the city coun­cil own­ing the build­ings, the project has reached a cer­tain degree of sta­bil­i­ty. It hosts a col­lec­tive house, a gig room, a hack­lab, a free shop, an infos­hop, a col­lec­tive gar­den, a library…

We hope that many of you will be able to join. Please tell us a bit in advance if you’re plan­ning to come, so that we get an idea of the num­ber of peo­ple we have to acco­mo­date and plan food for. You’re very wel­come to pass this invi­ta­tion to squats and autonomous spaces that you know.

= Get­ting in touch & help­ing out

Please get in touch, by writ­ing to april2008 at squat dot net. Any help with trans­la­tions in what­ev­er lan­guages is great­ly appre­ci­at­ed.
http://april2008.squat.net/

Occupation Struggles Heat Up In Reading — Common Ground Community Garden

Press Release (For Imme­di­ate Release):
THREE ARRESTED @ COMMON GROUND!

At 11am on Mon­day 5th Novem­ber, three peo­ple were stopped by police in an unmarked police car whilst remov­ing board­ing from the entrance of the Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den in Kates­grove. Carl, one of the arrestees, explained that he told the police offi­cer he was “remov­ing the board­ing of the com­mu­ni­ty gar­den so that the com­mu­ni­ty could use the gar­den”. “The police offi­cer then called the coun­cil,” said carl, and “I over­heard that the coun­cil offi­cial want­ed the police to arrest us so that they could have a pho­to of our faces”. The three young men were arrest­ed for ‘attempt­ed bur­glary’ and ‘going equipped’, hand cuffed and tak­en to Read­ing police sta­tion where they were added to the ever grow­ing Police DNA data­base and then held in cus­tody cells for almost eight hours. One of them com­ment­ed that he could see his teach­ing career go down the drain as he sat in the cell.

Press Release (For Imme­di­ate Release):
THREE ARRESTED @ COMMON GROUND!

At 11am on Mon­day 5th Novem­ber, three peo­ple were stopped by police in an unmarked police car whilst remov­ing board­ing from the entrance of the Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den in Kates­grove. Carl, one of the arrestees, explained that he told the police offi­cer he was “remov­ing the board­ing of the com­mu­ni­ty gar­den so that the com­mu­ni­ty could use the gar­den”. “The police offi­cer then called the coun­cil,” said carl, and “I over­heard that the coun­cil offi­cial want­ed the police to arrest us so that they could have a pho­to of our faces”. The three young men were arrest­ed for ‘attempt­ed bur­glary’ and ‘going equipped’, hand cuffed and tak­en to Read­ing police sta­tion where they were added to the ever grow­ing Police DNA data­base and then held in cus­tody cells for almost eight hours. One of them com­ment­ed that he could see his teach­ing career go down the drain as he sat in the cell.

The Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den Col­lec­tive had decid­ed to reopen the gar­den despite coun­cil oppo­si­tion. Since the coun­cil regained con­trol over the gar­den site it has returned to being van­dalised and crim­i­nal groups have been enter­ing the derelict hous­es to steal cop­per pip­ing and lead from the roofs. “We want this dam­age to stop” said local res­i­dent Stu. “Hav­ing the com­mu­ni­ty gar­den open here stopped 5 years of crime, van­dal­ism and decay. Two weeks of coun­cil con­trol threat­ened to reverse that. So on Sun­day we repaired the fences and bench­es, secured the build­ings and tidied the lit­ter up. Open­ing up the front entrance was the last thing we need­ed to do to reopen the gar­den for pub­lic use”.

After eight hours in cus­tody the young men were ques­tioned. “When the police final­ly under­stood that we were gain­ing access to the gar­den from the road, not one of the build­ings, they dropped the case and let us go”. One offi­cer said to Carl “we dont have a prob­lem with you doing good things for the com­mu­ni­ty”.

This is a prime exam­ple of how impor­tant it is for peo­ple to know their legal rights in the face of police offi­cers and oth­er author­i­ties who often do not know or care.

Com­mon Ground Col­lec­tive now have new plans to con­tin­ue our fight, to find out more or get involved or offer your help please email us at:

katesgrovegarden(AT)yahoo.co.uk

Thanks!

http://www.myspace.co.uk/common_ground_garden

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In Read­ing, as the entire town is flogged off to inter­na­tion­al mon­ey-men and and the needs of the peo­ple go ignored, its dif­fi­cult to make the pri­or­i­ties and forces run­ning our neigh­bour­hoods and our world, and the injus­tice that results, more obvi­ous. But two ongo­ing strug­gles in the Kates­grove area of the town do just that.

Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den was cre­at­ed ear­ly this year by local res­i­dents, squat­ters and activists on derelict coun­cil owned land. For five years the coun­cil had left three build­ings and the sur­round­ing land in Sil­ver Street as a junk­yard, filled with trash and nee­dles. When a cut in coun­cil fund­ing meant that the vol­un­tary ‘Wom­ens Infor­ma­tion Cen­tre’ next door also became derelict, squat­ters moved in, and quick­ly decid­ed to do some­thing about the site next to them. From Jan­u­ary to May, they worked direct­ly-demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly, using recy­cling and the gen­eros­i­ty of neigh­bours and fam­i­ly to cre­ate a com­mu­ni­ty gar­den.

Two days before the open­ing day on May 19th, Read­ing Coun­cil began to respond in the same way they planned to car­ry on: with crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion and threats. Of course, the col­lec­tive also set their tone: resis­tance! The coun­cil secured an injunc­tion ban­ning the open day and up to 200 local res­i­dents ignored it, enjoy­ing the gar­den, live music and a BBQ. The coun­cil then secured an injunc­tion ban­ning the dai­ly open­ing of the gar­den and the hold­ing of com­mu­ni­ty events. Yet every day for the next five months the gar­den was open to all, and has been enjoyed by many local res­i­dents of all ages and colours. Some even took the ini­tia­tive to reg­u­lar­ly work in the gar­den, weed­ing and cut­ting the grass. Mean­while more com­mu­ni­ty BBQ’s were held through­out the sum­mer. The coun­cil then obtained an evic­tion order to evict the squat­ters and close down the gar­den. Twice, in June and August, local res­i­dents and activist friends mobilised to defend the gar­den, and both times the coun­cil chick­ened out. Final­ly, on Octo­ber 18th coun­cil offi­cials and bail­lifs, backed up by cops, evict­ed the squat­ters and dragged one local res­i­dent (also an AFer) from the gar­den, before board­ing the site up.

How­ev­er, it aint over yet! Since that day, the build­ings have been repeat­ed­ly re-opened by squat­ters and re-sealed by builders, piss­ing the coun­cil off no end. Less-pos­i­tive­ly the gar­den began to return to the state of dis­re­pair it was in a year ago, as van­dal­ism and theft crept back in. So, this week, peo­ple involved in Com­mon Ground decid­ed to re-open the gar­den — an act which is not ille­gal. How­ev­er, since when has the law ever mat­tered to peo­ple in pow­er? Cops in an ummarked car arrest­ed the three gar­den­ers half way through their task. When they phoned the coun­cil to ask if they want­ed the gar­den­ers arrest­ed, the reply over­heard was “yes, so we can get a pho­to of their faces”. The three were nicked for ‘attempt­ed bur­glary and going equipped’ before being added to the DNA data­base and held in the cells for eight hours. Even­tu­al­ly, after explain­ing to the inter­view­ing cops that they wer­ent break­ing into a build­ing, but open­ing the gar­den (as they had orig­i­nal­ly explained to the arrest­ing offi­cers!), the three were released with­out charge.

The rea­sons for the coun­cils attacks on this won­de­ful com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tive are obvi­ous: They want to pri­va­tise the site, dump­ing their respon­si­bil­i­ty to use land to ful­fill social needs and facil­i­tat­ing a devel­op­er mak­ing huge prof­its. The com­pa­ny in ques­tion is named Unite, and plan to build pri­vate stu­dent acco­mo­da­tion (renowned for rip­ping stu­dents off), despite the uni­ver­si­ty hold­ing two stu­dent halls build­ings emp­ty round the cor­ner so they can flog them for devel­op­ment into more unnaford­able flats — its all about prof­it over peo­ple. Despite this, Com­mon Ground aim to offer their ser­vices to the author­i­ties as ‘care­tak­ers’ for the site, while plan­ning a cam­paign against the devel­op­ment and for a direct­ly-demo­c­ra­t­ic process for the com­mu­ni­ty to decide what hap­pens to the site long-term. In addi­tion, they plan to re-open the gar­den next week­end for a one-day com­mu­ni­ty event.

Mean­while a lit­tle way down the road, sim­i­lar process­es are at work, as prof­i­teer­ing boss­es are seek­ing the evic­tion of up to 40 squat­ters. Townsend House is a 53 bed­room build­ing, in the same area as Com­mon Ground which was orig­i­nal­ly run by a char­i­ty as a shel­ter for vul­ner­a­ble women. How­ev­er, in what looks like a seri­ous­ly dodgy deal, the build­ing was ‘inter­nal­ly’ sold in 2006 to the char­i­ties par­ent com­pa­ny for less than £100,000 and the women were re-housed by the coun­cil! The prop­er­ty then stood emp­ty for a year before being squat­ted in June this year. Since then it has become home to a diverse com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple, includ­ing migrants, fam­i­lies with chil­dren, unem­ployed or retired work­ers and assort­ed young peo­ple. It is organ­ised through week­ly assem­blies, and though def­i­nite­ly not per­fect, it is an inter­est­ing exam­ple of a self-man­aged com­mu­ni­ty.

Of course, now the cor­po­ra­tion wants it back, iron­i­cal­ly claim­ing they want to ‘house vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple’! A recent court hear­ing gave the squat­ters a three week adjourn­ment, but no doubt the law will pro­tect the boss­es ‘prop­er­ty rights’ over the needs of the res­i­dents in the end. How­ev­er, it looks pos­si­ble that the res­i­dents could resist evic­tion through direct-action if legal means fail, and local activists could lend their sup­port.

For more info or to offer your sup­port and help to either of these projects please con­tact

katesgrovegarden(AT)yahoo.co.uk
defendtownsendhousehotmail.co.uk

Autumn EF! Action Update out — and advance notice of the Winter Moot, 22–24 February (gathering of eco-activists), Nottingham

The lat­est issue of the quar­ter­ly EF!AU was dished up at the Anar­chist Book­fair — burst­ing at the seams, it had to be turned into a bumper issue, with a round-up of the actions around the time of the Camp for Cli­mate Action, plus loads of action reports from around the world since then — from pieing oil exec­u­tives, blockad­ing garages & air­ports, polar bears lock­ing-on, sab­o­tage, pris­on­ers, occu­pied spaces, dig­ger-div­ing, GM crop-trash­ing, to cake and the cun­ning use of mung beans (oh, and of course, much much more).

The lat­est issue of the quar­ter­ly EF!AU was dished up at the Anar­chist Book­fair — burst­ing at the seams, it had to be turned into a bumper issue, with a round-up of the actions around the time of the Camp for Cli­mate Action, plus loads of action reports from around the world since then — from pieing oil exec­u­tives, blockad­ing garages & air­ports, polar bears lock­ing-on, sab­o­tage, pris­on­ers, occu­pied spaces, dig­ger-div­ing, GM crop-trash­ing, to cake and the cun­ning use of mung beans (oh, and of course, much much more).

Down­load it to print out and share here. Do get in touch with the edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive to let them know if you’re dish­ing it up round your way, or need paper copies, or want to give them one of the rar­er ingre­di­ents, dosh (to send it to pris­on­ers, protest camps and far beyond) — their con­tact details and more are here

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The EF! Win­ter Moot will hap­pen from 22nd — 24th Feb­ru­ary 2008, in Not­ting­ham — more details near­er the time, as this is just advance notice.

It’s a gath­er­ing for envi­ron­men­tal activists — in the past, it’s been a chance for peo­ple involved in all kinds of eco­log­i­cal direct action to get togeth­er for a week­end indoors to chat about where things are at in the UK, and so improve all aspects of how we work togeth­er, in order to take direct action in defence of the earth.

Con­tact 0845–0223 5254 for more info

“Common Ground” Community Garden Finally Evicted

Report on Thurs­day 18th Octo­bers evic­tion of Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den.

It seems it was “fourth time lucky” for Read­ing Bor­ough Coun­cil bailiffs today, when they final­ly realised that it’s not a good idea to inform anar­cho-com­mies (and oth­er assort­ed rev­o­lu­tion­ary repro­bates) 2 weeks in advance if you want to evict them from coun­cil land. Arriv­ing unan­nounced at 9.00am this morn­ing, they began by evict­ing our squat­ting neigh­bours, giv­ing us enough time to form an impromp­tu resis­tance of 3 peo­ple.

Report on Thurs­day 18th Octo­bers evic­tion of Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den.

It seems it was “fourth time lucky” for Read­ing Bor­ough Coun­cil bailiffs today, when they final­ly realised that it’s not a good idea to inform anar­cho-com­mies (and oth­er assort­ed rev­o­lu­tion­ary repro­bates) 2 weeks in advance if you want to evict them from coun­cil land. Arriv­ing unan­nounced at 9.00am this morn­ing, they began by evict­ing our squat­ting neigh­bours, giv­ing us enough time to form an impromp­tu resis­tance of 3 peo­ple.

This reporter arrived at 10.00am, to find approx­i­mate­ly 8 police, 4 bailiffs, 4 coun­cil rep­re­sen­ta­tives and a bunch of burly builders board­ing up build­ings. Coun­cil bailiffs had kicked a large hole in our gar­den fence, which they left unguard­ed. After a short con­sul­ta­tion we decid­ed to climb through it, sit in our gar­den and peace­ful­ly resist. This reporter is ashamed to say that his resis­tance last­ed a mat­ter of min­utes, before he was con­vinced to leave the gar­den rather than face the pos­si­bil­i­ty of arrest. The resilience of his com­rades was some­what more respectable.

Leav­ing the gar­den, he dis­cov­ered that the 8 police had left just as the fun seemed to be start­ing, beg­ging the ques­tion “why had they come in the first place?”

Bailiffs and coun­cil employ­ees attempt­ed to use diplo­ma­cy (a facet for which they are not well known) to con­vince the remain­ing two gar­den­ers to leave. Both refused, and there ensued a minor kafuf­fle. A charm­ing gen­tle­man, sport­ing a fash­ion­able red coat (pic­tured) blocked our pho­tog­ra­ph­er from tak­ing any pic­tures of this. At one point, he even attempt­ed to steal the cam­era prompt­ing the ques­tion “What the fuck are you doing?”. He imme­di­ate­ly desist­ed in his klep­to­ma­ni­ac-like actions, but refused to stand aside and allow fur­ther pic­tures to be tak­en of this inci­dent.

By this time, there was but one com­rade remain­ing in the gar­den. Coun­cil employ­ees and bailiffs, unsure what to do about this final poten­tial men­ace, decid­ed to call for back-up. After a wait of 15 min­utes, a riot van arrived con­tain­ing 2 of Thames Val­leys finest, aka da Five‑0, da Fuzz, da Filth, da Feds aka PC 5479 A Hunt, PC 5292.

The offi­cers of the law entered the gar­den and a new arrival from our group fol­lowed them. He was asked to leave, with the promise of some con­ver­sa­tion, which he did not get. Once again we were down to one soli­tary indi­vid­ual, peace­ful­ly refus­ing to leave. The offi­cers of the law asked him to move on; he refused. This called for extreme solu­tions: one police man got on the phone and asked his boss what he should do. The answer was clear­ly “do noth­ing”, for that is what they did….

It seemed that no police or bailiffs actu­al­ly want­ed to arrest our “last man stand­ing”. Per­haps they realised the poten­tial dan­ger that they would be putting them­selves in (for he is a 3rd dan black belt in origa­mi…), but more like­ly there was nobody that was pre­pared to be “the one that arrest­ed a gar­den­er”. In any case, it even­tu­al­ly fell to a gen­tle­man from the coun­cil to forcibly pick him up and remove him from the gar­den. This sig­nalled the end of our resis­tance, and we called it a day.

At the time of going to press, sev­er­al ideas are being float­ed about to keep up the momen­tum and build upon the com­mu­ni­ty spir­it that Com­mon Ground has cre­at­ed so far. Need­less to say, this is not the last that Read­ing Bor­ough Coun­cil will hear from us, and it may not be the last time we set foot in our gar­den

————————————-

Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den — on squat­ted land in Sil­ver Street, Kates­grove — was evict­ed Fri­day morn­ing. This is the third evic­tion attempt, the pre­vi­ous two, which the coun­cil announced in advance, were met with strong local resis­tance.

At about 9am on 18th Octo­ber 2007 coun­cil offi­cials, bail­liffs, police and PCSO’s arrived, and coun­cil offi­cials broke down the door to num­ber 6 Sil­ver Street (ex-Wom­ens Infor­ma­tion Cen­tre). Police and offi­cials entered the prop­er­ty and evict­ed the two peo­ple liv­ing there. They also broke a hole in the gar­den fence.

Around this time a cou­ple of local res­i­dents, who have worked and relaxed in the com­mu­ni­ty gar­den over the past 10 months, arrived on the scene, ask­ing ques­tions and attempt­ing to take pho­tographs of the event. After the evic­tion teams plans to “board-up” the gar­den were over­heard, two more local peo­ple who have worked in Com­mon Ground arrived.

Three peo­ple entered the gar­den and sat at a table, before coun­cil offi­cials entered and told them to leave. An argu­ment fol­lowed as the res­i­dents demand­ed that the com­mu­ni­ty should be asked what it want­ed to hap­pen to the site, rather than a devel­op­ment being imposed with­out con­sul­ta­tion, while coun­cil offi­cials sim­ply replied “its pri­vate prop­er­ty” — as if this is more impor­tant than social and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns or local democ­ra­cy. When told “This isn’t right and you know it!”, offi­cials replied “You may have a moral argu­ment, but by the law this is right”. Sure­ly there is some­thing wrong with law when it con­flicts with what is moral­ly right or with local democ­ra­cy?

One coun­cil offi­cial began to get aggres­sive and pulled one per­son­’s seat from under­neath them, throw­ing it across the gar­den. He then start­ed shov­ing the res­i­dent and squar­ing up to him, while the res­i­dent stood his ground and asked the offi­cial his name. Even­tu­al­ly, two res­i­dents had to leave the gar­den for per­son­al rea­sons, while one remained. Offi­cials asked him to leave again, before ask­ing the police, who had left, to return.

The Police once again asked the res­i­dent to leave, to avoid “embar­rass­ment”, only to be told “I’m not embar­rassed to defend this gar­den”. Even­tu­al­ly, fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions between the coun­cil and the police, a reluc­tant coun­cil offi­cial was told to use rea­son­able force to evict the per­son. The pro­test­er was phys­i­cal­ly lift­ed and dragged out of the gar­den, before builders fit­ted boards over the gar­den gate and over the hole in the fence.

This is def­i­nite­ly not the end, and Com­mon Ground Col­lec­tive will dis­cuss var­i­ous options over the week­end.

The Coun­cil have stat­ed in press releas­es and in the recent full coun­cil meet­ing that offers of alter­na­tive land had been reject­ed ‘out of hand’ by the gar­den­ers. This is a mis­lead­ing state­ment. Com­mon Ground gave care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion to the offers and, as a group, agreed to con­tin­ue defend the gar­den where it is, and push for a local demo­c­ra­t­ic process where the com­mu­ni­ty would decide what hap­pens to the site long term.

How­ev­er, indi­vid­u­als involved in Com­mon Ground have begun engag­ing in dis­cus­sion with local coun­cil­lors and the Kates­grove Res­i­dents Asso­ci­a­tion to dis­cuss the via­bil­i­ty of cre­at­ing oth­er com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens on the land offered by the coun­cil. It should be point­ed out how­ev­er, that both alter­na­tives are not with­out imme­di­ate prob­lems as one is very small and slopes down to the riv­er mak­ing it poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous, and the oth­er is not whol­ly owned by the coun­cil. The iden­ti­ty of the part own­er in the lat­ter case is seem­ing­ly unknown. But all options will be con­sid­ered and pur­sued as far as they can go.

Thanks for all sup­port we have recieved over the last year, we’ll be back!

katesgrovegarden(AT)yahoo.co.uk
http://www.myspace.com/common_ground_garden

Activist Film Festival is seeking submissions

Under­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Beyond TV 8 flierUnder­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Sub­ject: Polit­i­cal Activist videos want­ed
From: under­cur­rents

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS OF FILMS

FOR BEYONDTV FESTIVAL NOVEMBER 2007

What is BEYONDTV?
From Novem­ber 28 to Decem­ber 2, 2007, Rad­i­cal media char­i­ty, Under­cur­rents will host the 8th annu­al BEYONDTV fes­ti­val of polit­i­cal doc­u­men­taries, ani­ma­tions and music videos from inspir­ing media direc­tors.

Under­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Impor­tant Note: We do not screen dra­mas using actors

BEYONDTV will be host­ed at the Dylan Thomas Cen­tre and Tal­iesin Cin­e­ma Swansea from Novem­ber 28 — Decem­ber 2, 2007

More details at http://www.beyondtvfestival.info
beyondtv@undercurrents.org

Under­cur­rents
Old Exchange
Pier st
Swansea
SA1 1RY
UK

Brighton police make early morning raid against squat.

16.10.2007
At 4am Brighton police demand­ed squat­ters leave a new squat on Franklin road. Despite resis­tance by 5am the squat­ters had been evict­ed by the police, who were act­ing unlaw­ful­ly with­out a court order.

All Coppers are Bastards16.10.2007
At 4am Brighton police demand­ed squat­ters leave a new squat on Franklin road. Despite resis­tance by 5am the squat­ters had been evict­ed by the police, who were act­ing unlaw­ful­ly with­out a court order.

The police refused to acknowl­edge the ‘Sec­tion 6’ notice and said they were igno­rant of the law, even though the group of squat­ters had been pre­vi­ous­ly evict­ed by the some of the same police recent­ly.

There was a dog unit, 4 squad cars, drugs unit, and 2 undercover/civil cars (whose reg­is­tra­tion plates were not­ed), as well as a senior offi­cer who was over­heard say­ing that he would per­son­al­ly not tol­er­ate squat­ting in Brighton. Not real­ly a sur­prise there.

3 cop­pers kicked the door in, whilst 8 squat­ters resist­ed their efforts. Whilst this was hap­pen­ing the pigs laughed and joked about going hol­i­day out­side.

When the squat­ters were hauled out of the build­ing they were threat­ened with arrest for not pay­ing elec­tric­i­ty or water bills. When the cops saw that there was 8 peo­ple, they could­n’t be both­ered with the paper work and just took peo­ples names instead.

The squat­ters argued with the cops for half an hour until they were threat­ened with deten­tion, as the squat­ters left the area with the few pos­ses­sions they could man­age to take from the dis­used build­ing which had been emp­ty for the last 3 years, they were fol­lowed and har­rassed by under­cov­er police for about an hour.

It comes as no sur­prise that the police don’t fol­low the law, they are an armed gang pro­tect­ing what they think is nor­mal soci­ety, but it is clear that if they think kick­ing young home­less peo­ple out into the rain at 4am is nor­mal, they got a lot to learn.

Right now we are not going to give up squat­ting, because we have no choice, but organ­is­ing our­selves against the pigs, land­lords and politi­cians is the best adven­ture going right now — and we sure as hell ain’t going to work for a liv­ing!

We won’t stop squat­ting until the pigs fly off a cliff !

Squat­ters Asso­ci­a­tion of Brighton

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Day of Action — protests throughout England, Scotland & Wales — from cake to locked-on polar bears

Protests in Bris­tol, Lon­don, Manc, Nor­wich, Cam­bridge, Sheffield, Oxford, Edin­burgh, Truro, Birm­ing­ham, Glas­gow, Aberys­t­wyth, Cardiff, Bath, Brad­ford, St Andrews, Ply­mouth, Read­ing, Leam­ing­ton Spa, Leices­ter & Altrin­cham (‘read more’ for details, pho­tos, audio & video clips)

Protests in Bris­tol, Lon­don, Manc, Nor­wich, Cam­bridge, Sheffield, Oxford, Edin­burgh, Truro, Birm­ing­ham, Glas­gow, Aberys­t­wyth, Cardiff, Bath, Brad­ford, St Andrews, Ply­mouth, Read­ing, Leam­ing­ton Spa, Leices­ter & Altrin­cham (‘read more’ for details, pho­tos, audio & video clips)



Bristol RBS 3
Bristol RBS 4
Bristol RBS 5
A group of ‘cli­mate refugees’ blocked the vehi­cle entrance to the Roy­al Bank of Scotland’s Cor­po­rate Offices at Tem­ple Quay to shine the spot­light on cli­mate crim­i­nals RBS, the self-pro­claimed ‘Oil and Gas’ Bank. Four peo­ple from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide for Cli­mate Action dressed as home­less polar bears have locked them­selves togeth­er and pre­vent­ed all vehi­cles enter­ing the RBS branch for six and a half hours.

Today’s block­ade last­ed six and a half hours with the last ‘cli­mate refugee’ being final­ly chis­eled out at 2.30pm. Four peo­ple are cur­rent­ly being held at Trin­i­ty police sta­tion.
The police used a dubi­ous method of deal­ing with it — they lift­ed peo­ple and suit­cas­es on to trol­leys and then wheeled them away. This caused severe dis­com­fort and pan­ic for the peo­ple on the ground and at least one of them has bruis­ing as a result.
RBS lost many hours today due to rock­ing up late cos of park­ing issues and the many employ­ees that spent the day star­ing out of the win­dows watch­ing the dra­ma unfold­ing and tak­ing pho­tos on their phones (check out you tube for clips!).

———-

PRESS RELEASE: ‘Cli­mate refugees’ locked up at the Oil Bank of Scot­land, Bris­tol

A group of ‘cli­mate refugees’ are block­ing the vehi­cle entrance to the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land’s Cor­po­rate Offices at Tem­ple Quay to shine the spot­light on cli­mate crim­i­nals RBS, the self-pro­claimed ‘Oil and Gas’ Bank.

Six peo­ple from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide for Cli­mate Action dressed as home­less polar bears have locked them­selves togeth­er and are cur­rent­ly pre­vent­ing all vehi­cles enter­ing the RBS branch. This is part of a Nation­al Day of Local Action against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land called by those huge­ly con­cerned with the dev­as­ta­tion to the cli­mate, plan­et and people.[1]

RBS-NatWest pub­licly pro­motes itself as “The Oil & Gas Bank”. They pro­vide the finan­cial fuel that is accel­er­at­ing cli­mate change. With­out these loans to oil and gas cor­po­ra­tions the projects would not hap­pen. [2]It is esti­mate that *in 2006, the bank pro­vid­ed over $10 bil­lion to fos­sil fuels – more than five times that pro­vid­ed to renew­able energy.[3]*

RBS pro­vide oil cor­po­ra­tions with loans to build new mas­sive­ly eco­log­i­cal­ly detri­men­tal drilling rigs, pipelines and oil tankers. [4] And as RBS’s prof­its rise so does the car­bon in the atmos­phere.

Glob­al cli­mate change already forces more peo­ple from their homes each year than war. And as the effects wors­en, one in sev­en peo­ple on Earth today could be forced to leave their homes over the next 50 years. [5]

A polar bear said, “I am here to let RBS know that their fun­nelling of cash into fos­sil fuel projects is mak­ing myself and mil­lions of oth­er ani­mals, includ­ing humans home­less.”

Anoth­er polar bear said “If car­bon diox­ide mol­e­cules had cor­po­rate tags of respon­si­bil­i­ty, the atmos­phere would be full of RBS logos min­gling with those of BP, Exxon and Shell!”

Con­tact:

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide 07951789187
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Notes for Edi­tors

[1] The day of action was called by the UK Ris­ing Tide Net­work at this years Camp for Cli­mate Action which took place next to Heathrow Air­port. www.risingtide.org.uk

[2] In 2005 emis­sions from RBS financed oil and gas projects was about a quar­ter of the amount pro­duced by all UK homes.

[3] tak­en from: *The Oil and Gas Bank; RBS and the financ­ing of cli­mate change * http://peopleandplanet.org/dl/ddd/rbs_report.pdf

[4] RBS is help­ing force open the car­bon fron­tier, financ­ing con­tro­ver­sial projects in Nige­ria, the Cau­ca­sus and Wales. Its involve­ment in Angolan and Niger­ian oil fields encour­ages cor­rup­tion and con­flict, while gas projects from the Ara­bi­an Gulf to the Gulf of Mex­i­co threat­en envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion.

[5] Fig­ures from “Human Tide: The Real Migra­tion Cri­sis,” by Chris­t­ian Aid. The report calls for “urgent action by the world com­mu­ni­ty” if the worst effects of this cri­sis are to be avert­ed.

=========================


one arrest at Roy­al Bank of Scot­land ban­ner drop this morn­ing in Lon­don

around a dozen activists from ‘ris­ing tide’ high­light­ed roy­al bank of scot­land’s shod­dy record of invest­ment in cli­mate change. one clam­bered on the glass canopy of their city hq to unfurl a ban­ner while oth­ers hand­ed out more than 900 leaflets

short­ly before 9am this morn­ing police sealed off the pave­ment under the glass canopy in front of 280 bish­ops­gate, the lon­don hq of the roy­al bank of scot­land. an activist had clam­bered up with a ban­ner pro­claim­ing ‘the oil bank of scot­land’, while a dozen oth­ers leaflet­ted passers-by and bank work­ers out­side the front doors.

the activists also had var­i­ous ban­ners, and one was fetch­ing­ly dressed as a polar bear.

the action last­ed about an hour and a half, while police pho­tog­ra­ph­er steve dis­combe used up the bat­tery of his long lens cam­era tak­ing shots of every­one involved. luck­i­ly, police back-up arrived with anoth­er bat­tery just as the ban­ner man came down.

police tried to seize the ban­ner from activists “as evi­dence” and after a short but com­ic game of ‘pig­gy in the mid­dle’, they suc­ceed­ed. in past cas­es around par­lia­ment square, it has been shown in court that if police have clear pho­tos of the ban­ner, under PACE they have no fur­ther right to seize the actu­al ban­ner, so in effect they stole it this morn­ing (as they often do!).

the ban­ner man was arrest­ed for ‘caus­ing a pub­lic nui­sance’ and it is believed he was tak­en to beth­nal green police sta­tion.

activists were high­light­ing the fact that RBS-NatWest have in the last five years fund­ed 655 mil­lion tonnes of emis­sions) which is more than the UK’s entire annu­al emis­sions. the bank has launched ‘avi­a­tion cap­i­tal’ to help put more planes in the sky, and it has pumped over $10billion into the oil and gas indus­try, fund­ing rigs, tankers and pipelines.

there is a fur­ther protest planned out­side the bank at 5pm today

20071015_RBS_WMV — video/x‑ms-wmv 15M

20071015_RBS_QT — video/quicktime 13M
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Lon­don pranks: ‘This Com­pa­ny is Out of Order’ signs left on 15 RBS and Natwest cash machines in cen­tral Lon­don. Pranksters do invis­i­ble the­atre in branch­es, try­ing to open accounts, hav­ing argu­ments about RBS’ uneth­i­cal poli­cies in the queues, and leav­ing piles of anti-RBS leaflets amongst their cor­po­rate pro­pa­gan­da. They then go under­ground for some ‘Tube Edu­ca­tion’, leaflet­ing and talk­ing to Tube pas­sen­gers.

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Nation­al cli­mate protests against Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, ‘The Oil and Gas Bank’

15 Octo­ber 2007
For imme­di­ate release, for pho­tographs con­tact Mike J Wells 07799152888

POLAR BEAR PINS BLAME ON RBS DOOR

Cli­mate Change direct action group Lon­don Ris­ing Tide and friends, this morn­ing occu­pied the head­quar­ters of the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land to expose their role in Cli­mate Chaos. This was one of many actions hap­pen­ing across the UK today as part of a UK Ris­ing Tide call out for a Nation­al day of action against RBS.

Activists dropped a ban­ner read­ing “RBS prof­its, cli­mate cops it” from the bal­cony, while oth­ers held plac­ards on the street in front of the build­ing on Bish­ops­gate.

A polar bear, cur­rent­ly sleep­ing rough since the artic ice became his­to­ry, also attend­ed to ask “why are RBS still invest­ing in fos­sil fuel projects like ‘gas pipelines’ in Wales and ‘Tar sands strip min­ing’ in what was Cana­di­an Arbo­re­al For­est?”

The Bear said “Banks like RBS are the hid­den dri­vers of cli­mate change by offer­ing loans to fos­sil fuel projects that oth­er­wise the World Bank would not sup­port”.

RBS calls itself the ‘Oil and Gas Bank’, and is the pri­ma­ry UK fun­der of fos­sil fuel extrac­tion. RBS pro­vides oil com­pa­nies with the cap­i­tal to build and oper­ate drilling rigs, pipelines and oil tankers in some of the most sen­si­tive and unsta­ble places in the world. Through Avi­a­tion Cap­i­tal, RBS financ­ing allows air­lines to expand their fleets and put more planes into the skies.

The thir­ty oil and gas finance deals RBS signed between 2001 and 2006 will cre­ate 655 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon emis­sions over the next 15 years, which is more than the UK’s entire annu­al emis­sions. (2)

‘Banks like RBS who prof­it hand­some­ly from cli­mate-destroy­ing projects have stood in the shad­ows for too long, but they are as guilty as the oil com­pa­nies. If car­bon diox­ide mol­e­cules had cor­po­rate tags of respon­si­bil­i­ty, the atmos­phere would be full of RBS logos min­gling with those of BP, Exxon and Shell’, said Mar­tin Red­fern, from Lon­don.

For inter­views from the protest call 075 1311 9047

For more details vis­it
. www.risingtide.org.uk
. http://www.carbonweb.org/showitem.asp?article=268&parent=267
(www.platform.org.uk)
. www.londonrisingtide.org.uk
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ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND.…THE ‘OIL AND GAS BANK’

Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action tar­get­ed the RBS head­quar­ters on Deans­gate, Man­ches­ter, as part of a nation­al day of action called by the Ris­ing Tide net­work.

Local groups which formed to mobilise for this year’s Camp for Cli­mate Action, have this morn­ing tak­en action against RBS, a major backer of the avi­a­tion indus­try and the world’s self-described ‘Oil and Gas Bank’.

Ban­ners were dis­played read­ing: ‘Cli­mate Change: RBS Makes It Hap­pen’ and ‘No Pipeline! Green Ener­gy Not Gas’. Pro­test­ers were greet­ed by 3 Tac­ti­cal Aid Unit Vans and secu­ri­ty guards, but despite police attempts to stop noise under the pub­lic order act, the sam­ba band played and fly­ers were giv­en out to work­ers, cus­tomers and passers by.

RBS employs some 5,000 staff in the Greater Man­ches­ter area and is the 2nd largest pri­vate employ­er in the area.

RBS pro­vides oil com­pa­nies with the cash to build and oper­ate drilling rigs, pipelines and oil tankers. RBS also prof­its through the avi­a­tion indus­try. From the Niger Delta to the Arc­tic, RBS loans play a key role in
forc­ing open the new car­bon fron­tier, which con­tributes to envi­ron­men­tal destruction,disruption of indige­nous peo­ples and increased con­flict across the plan­et.

RBS is the sec­ond-largest bank in Europe and has glob­al assets of over $1120 bil­lion, includ­ing UK brands NatWest, Direct Line and Churchill Insur­ance. Despite cre­at­ing a heav­i­ly green washed pub­lic image through
spon­sor­ship of sports and the arts, RBS activ­i­ties have major destruc­tive impacts on the envi­ron­ment and soci­ety. The thir­ty oil and gas finance deals RBS signed between 2001 and 2006 locked us all into 655 mil­lion
tonnes of emis­sions over the next 15 years, more than the UK’s entire annu­al emis­sions.

Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action meet reg­u­lar­ly, for more infor­ma­tion email:
manchester@climatecamp.org.uk. Next meet­ing is Tues­day 16th, 6pm, Eighth Day café, Oxford Rd (near Man­ches­ter Met­ro­pol­i­tan Uni­ver­si­ty, oppo­site All Saints Park.)

radio report of rbs protest — mp3 2.2M
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Triple wham­my for RBS in Nor­wich

Last night, the doors of the RBS-Natwest Group Tech­nol­o­gy office on Exchange Street and the main RBS branch on Queen Street were locked shut. When staff showed up for work this morn­ing at the Queen Street branch they found them­selves locked out, and gath­ered oppo­site the branch to see what would hap­pen. Soon after, 6 activists from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide turned up with leaflets and ban­ners read­ing ‘RBS: Financ­ing Cli­mate Change’ and ‘Closed for a Total Re-think’. The d‑lock proved to be a good one, and the bank was delayed from open­ing for busi­ness for over an hour. Ris­ing Tiders hand­ed out leaflets and chat­ted to the wait­ing staff and cus­tomers, with the usu­al mixed response. Passers-by were gen­er­al­ly sup­port­ive, and the police showed up only at the very end, once the bank had re-opened and we were run­ning low on leaflets. After our 500-strong leaflet stash had been exhaust­ed, we decid­ed to call it a morn­ing.

norwich@risingtide.org.uk
http://www.risingtide.org.uk

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Cam­bridge RBS action

At lunchtime on Mon­day 15 Octo­ber, around ten activists assem­bled out­side the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land branch on Trin­i­ty Street, Cam­bridge, as part of the nation­al day of action against the UK’s main bankroller of car­bon emit­ters. The pro­test­ers put up plac­ards next to the ATM, hand­ed out leaflets, and engaged passers-by and cus­tomers in dis­cus­sion.

Four police offi­cers were also in atten­dance, one tak­ing pic­tures of all the leaflet­ters. A num­ber of peo­ple who hap­pened to be pass­ing by want­ed to know the rea­son for this. Among these were an Amer­i­can woman who got quite strop­py with the offi­cers, and a young guy who want­ed to have pic­ture tak­en with one of the pro­test­ers (the police duti­ful­ly oblig­ed). Although the police came across all friend­ly, they did play their usu­al intim­i­da­tion tac­tics of drop­ping details of pro­test­ers into the con­ver­sa­tion that they could only have lift­ed from FIT files. On the flip­side, they asked for the plac­ards to be moved away from the ATM, as “cus­tomers might feel intim­i­dat­ed.”

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Roy­al Bank of Scot­land Tar­get­ed for Invest­ing in Cli­mate Change

A group of activists leaflet­ted the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land in Broomhill, Sheffield as part of a Nation­al Day of Action. Over 20 actions have tak­en place all around the coun­try includ­ing banks being locked up in Nor­wich and polar bears blockad­ing in Bris­tol. This is all part of a cam­paign against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land which invests heav­i­ly in oil and gas, which is accel­er­at­ing cli­mate change.

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Oxford RBS
Quick Update on Today’s Oxford RBS Actions

Oxford cli­mate activists tar­get­ed a branch­es of both the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land and NatWest as part of the today’s Nation­al Day of Action. With ban­ners and oil-spat­tered T‑Shirts declar­ing “RBS Group — Fund­ing Cli­mate Change”, “Dirty Bankers — Shaft­ing The Plan­et”, and “The Oil Bank Of Scot­land”, they caused a stir in Oxford’s busiest shop­ping precinct and dis­trib­uted hun­dreds of leaflets to inter­est­ed cus­tomers and passers-by.

Activists also entered both branch­es with a large oil pipeline, explain­ing to cus­tomers and staff that they were deliv­er­ing it to the branch, but could­n’t leave until they’d spo­ken to Head Office to con­firm that it had arrived safe­ly. They stayed in each branch cheer­ful­ly (and loud­ly) rem­i­nisc­ing with staff and cus­tomers about all the oth­er pipelines and fos­sil fuel projects the bank was fund­ing, and how much cli­mate change they were caus­ing, until removed by the police. In the NatWest branch, they also man­aged to get a call put through to Head Office and asked them why RBS were fund­ing so many cli­mate-trash­ing projects (they did­n’t get any decent answers though).

No-one was arrest­ed, although one pro­test­er had to give their name and address under Sec­tion 50 of the Police Reform Act for “anti-social behav­iour” (they were appar­ent­ly caus­ing “alarm and dis­tress” by stand­ing in a bank, talk­ing about cli­mate change and hold­ing a card­board oil pipe).

Oxford Cli­mate Action meet on Mon­days at the Oxford Action Resource Cen­tre (OARC — www.theoarc.org.uk). To get involved, con­tact oxford@climatecamp.org.uk — new mem­bers always wel­come!

Link to video of Action

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Stu­dents from Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty protest­ed out­side RBS’s Cen­tral Branch in Edin­burgh as part of Ris­ing Tide’s nation­al day of action against RBS’s fund­ing of oil and gas extrac­tion.

Stu­dents from Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty Peo­ple & Plan­et group stepped up their cam­paign against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land (RBS) this morn­ing. Along­side oth­er Peo­ple & Plan­et groups in Scot­land, and cam­paign­ers from Ris­ing Tide, they took part in a nation­al ‘day of action’ tar­get­ing the Edin­burgh-based bank.

The protests aim to high­light RBS’s role as one of the world’s largest fun­ders of cli­mate-wreck­ing oil and gas extrac­tion. Emis­sions result­ing from RBS-sup­port­ed projects around the globe are greater than those of the whole of Scot­land.

Cam­paign­ers gave out infor­ma­tion to cus­tomers, held ban­ners, and waved oil cov­ered hands out­side RBS’s cen­tral branch in St. Andrew’s Square.

Peo­ple & Plan­et recent­ly worked with cli­mate change experts PLATFORM to write a report into RBS (2). The report draws atten­tion to the bank’s cru­cial role in sup­port­ing the glob­al oil and gas extrac­tion indus­try, where it pub­licly mar­kets itself as ‘the oil and gas bank’.

Sarah Hol­l­i­day, a mem­ber of Edin­burgh Peo­ple & Plan­et said:

“RBS call them­selves ‘the oil and gas bank’. They pro­vide huge amounts of advice and fund­ing for new oil extrac­tion. Their fos­sil fuels projects world­wide will lock us in to emis­sions for decades to come – mak­ing a low car­bon econ­o­my impos­si­ble. They are the UK’s main finan­cial dri­vers of cli­mate change.”

The cam­paign is a part of the Peo­ple & Plan­et nation­al cam­paign, “Ditch Dirty Devel­op­ment”, which is also call­ing on the Depart­ment for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment to stop using aid mon­ey to fund fos­sil fuel projects (3).

More pho­tos can be found here.

1) Peo­ple & Plan­et is the UK’s largest stu­dent cam­paign­ing net­work. It cam­paigns on world pover­ty, human rights and the envi­ron­ment: www.peopleandplanet.org http://pandp.eusa.ed.ac.uk

2) The report, enti­tled ‘The Oil and Gas Bank’, can be found here

3)“Ditch Dirty Devel­op­ment” cam­paign web­site
“Oil Bank of Scot­land” cam­paign web­site

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Also in Edin­burgh: The locks of the main entrances to at least six Edin­burgh RBS branch­es were glued shut last night, and all of them had to have the locks replaced today.

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2 branch­es in edin­burgh were giv­en ‘pol­lu­tion awards’ — along with var­i­ous oth­er posters about RBS pol­i­cy. unfor­tu­natly the police drove by while one branch was just being fin­ished off, and took the still wet posters off. 🙁 — next time…

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Truro RBS
Truro demo at RBS branch: Twelve activists from across Corn­wall gath­ered at the RBS branch in Truro for a two-hour demo with a friend­ly atmos­phere and good response from passers-by. They hand­ed out leaflets and slices of cake from a clock-shaped ‘11th hour’ cake, and made new con­nec­tions that built the foun­da­tions of a cli­mate action group for Corn­wall.

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Birm­ing­ham Uni flood cam­pus NatWest: Over thir­ty stu­dents from Birm­ing­ham Peo­ple and Plan­et descend­ed upon the Natwest branch on cam­pus. Some were dressed in boil­er suits and car­ried oil pipelines. Oth­ers, dressed as bankers and imper­son­at­ing mem­bers of the RBS Oil and Gas Team gave a high­ly sar­cas­tic pre­sen­ta­tion extolling the virtues of RBS’ oil and gas invest­ments. Oil pipes and boil­er suits. Dressed as bankers. Went in and gave mock pre­sen­ta­tion, imper­son­at­ed oil and gas team. Extolled virtues of RBS. 20 min­utes. Did pre­sen­ta­tion again a few more times on cam­pus. 30 peo­ple. Couldn’t all fit in. Birm­ing­ham Peo­ple and Plan­et.

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Glas­gow Trea­cle Tart Cabaret: After a half hour dis­cus­sion with the cen­tral Glas­gow RBS branch man­ag­er in which they expressed their anger about RBS’ invest­ment in oil and gas, two intre­pid activists left the branch, only to make a quick cos­tume change and return as the hosts of the Trea­cle Tart Cabaret. They sang, danced, waved ban­ners and plac­ards, got up on the cashiers’ desks and strut­ted their stuff, and even per­formed an Oil Rap. At this point the bank decid­ed to lock its doors, lock­ing the Tarts in and cus­tomers out, and effec­tive­ly shut­ting the bank down for an hour. Inside the atmos­phere was pos­i­tive, with the locked-in staff and cus­tomers get­ting into the swing of things. One of the Tarts capped off the per­for­mance by cut­ting up her RBS deb­it card as a mag­ic trick.

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Around a dozen cli­mate change refugees queued out­side Nat West Bank in Aberys­t­wyth today, Mon­day 15th Octo­ber, to beg a ‘bank offi­cial’ for a home loan because cli­mate change was destroy­ing their cur­rent home. The refugees ranged from an Aussie through a Green­lan­der to an Artic Cod. As the refugees were inter­viewed, vol­un­teers hand­ed out fliers on Roy­al Bank of Scot­land , Nat West and their invest­ment in projects linked to cli­mate change. Mean­while, RBS and Nat West ATMs all mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­played signs read­ing ‘OUT OF ORDER’ in large let­ters. On close inspec­tion with a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, the very small print read ‘RBS and Nat West invest­ment pol­i­cy’. The pos­si­ble effects of cli­mate change on a num­ber of coun­tries were mapped on the pave­ment with chalk – dis­turb­ing before and after snap­shots. As the refugees were all turned down for home loans, they car­ried a protest ban­ner into the bank. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, being weak­ened by loos­ing their homes, the refugees dropped the ban­ner and, being weight­ed down with heli­um bal­loons, it drift­ed up and dis­played itself from the ceil­ing for a good half an hour before staff man­aged to get it down.

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The main cardiff branch RBS on st Mary’s Street was closed 3 hours after 20 activists entered the build­ing caus­ing dis­trup­tion. Hun­dreds of leaflets were hand­ed out and ban­ners dis­played out­side. The process was repeat­ed at Natwest after­wards.

Lots of Police were in atten­dance includ­ing intel­li­gence gath­er­ers. Pho­tos to fol­low.

cardiffanarchists@riseup.net
http://southwalesanarchists.org

=========================

Don’t Bank On Oil In Bath

As part of today’s nation­al day of action against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, 7 activists from Bath Activist Net­work pick­et­ed the RBS branch on Qui­et Street in Bath, for two hours over lunch time. Ban­ner on dis­play, cus­tomers and passers-by were leaflet­ed with mock-up imi­ta­tion RBS lit­er­a­ture and invi­ta­tions to ‘Open an oil rig today!’, inform­ing the pub­lic about the Terms and Con­se­quences of bank­ing with RBS, their dodgy invest­ment record in fos­sil fuel extrac­tion and avi­a­tion indus­tries, and the 160,000 esti­mat­ed glob­al deaths a year due to the effects of cli­mate change. Whilst staff and police com­plained about the seem­ing­ly out-of-order ATM out­side their door, we lis­tened to sto­ries of cus­tomers’ poor treat­ment by their bank, and also helped at least the one stu­dent find more eth­i­cal options for his new account. Also bemus­ing were the mem­bers of pub­lic who mis­took the busi­ness-suit­ed activists for bank employ­ees, and chat­ted about the ser­vice.

bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk
http://myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

To read PLAT­FOR­M’s report on Roy­al bank of Scot­land, go here: http://peopleandplanet.org/dl/ddd/rbs_report.pdf
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Brad­ford stu­dents leaflet cam­pus Natwest

Stu­dents from the uni­ver­si­ty of Brad­ford Peo­ple & Plan­et group leaflet­ed at the Natwest branch on cam­pus. That’s all the details I know, hope­ful­ly more details to fol­low.

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St Andrews Uni P&P also did some protest per­for­mance art — ‘attempt­ing’ to open accounts in the town, etc.

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Ply­mouth — after a pro­ces­sion along North Hill Street, a group of peo­ple held a four-hour demo at the RBS branch near Drake Cir­cus, com­plete with music and drum­ming. A good response from passers-by, with lots of cus­tomers ask­ing direct­ly for leaflets.

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Read­ing Ris­ing Tide held a demo at the Read­ing RBS branch.

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A group of 5 held a demo in Leam­ing­ton.

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Cash-points were stick­ered with anti-RBS stick­ers in Leices­ter.

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Leaflets were stuck on lamp-posts in Altrin­cham.

Worldwide Day of Action Against McDonalds 16th October

14th Octo­ber 2007 ear­ly demo report: near­ly 30 peo­ple took part in the Lon­don leg of the world­wide anti-McDon­ald’s day. It start­ed at noon at the Leices­ter Square McDon­ald’s. There was a Ronald McDon­ald attack­ing a per­son dressed as a cow. The cow went down well with the kids and even some adults! Lots of leaflets were hand­ed out and the pub­lic seemed to be recep­tive on the whole. Also, the police were notice­able by their absence. The demo moved onto the Shaftes­bury Avenue McDon­ald’s and fin­ished at about 3.30.

Dying for a burger (London McD demo)
14th Octo­ber 2007 ear­ly demo report: near­ly 30 peo­ple took part in the Lon­don leg of the world­wide anti-McDon­ald’s day. It start­ed at noon at the Leices­ter Square McDon­ald’s. There was a Ronald McDon­ald attack­ing a per­son dressed as a cow. The cow went down well with the kids and even some adults! Lots of leaflets were hand­ed out and the pub­lic seemed to be recep­tive on the whole. Also, the police were notice­able by their absence. The demo moved onto the Shaftes­bury Avenue McDon­ald’s and fin­ished at about 3.30.

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Adopt-YOUR-Store — leaflets from Veg­gies or Do It Your­self. Details here

15th October — National Day of Local Action against Royal Bank of Scotland Update

It’s only a week away! There are plans afoot all over the coun­try, and there’s still time for you to organ­ise some­thing in your local area. A few things that might help:

Oily RBS logoIt’s only a week away! There are plans afoot all over the coun­try, and there’s still time for you to organ­ise some­thing in your local area. A few things that might help:

*There are leaflets avail­able to hand out on the day if you don’t fan­cy mak­ing your own. (Front — click here. Back — click here. And if you want editable ver­sions email us and we’ll email them to you).

*Stick­ers are also avail­able for what­ev­er sil­ly, seri­ous or sub­ver­sive pur­pose you can think of! Email us with a postal address to get a stash sent to you (these aren’t linked to the day of action so they’ll be use­ful into the future)
*There will be a nation­al press release about the day of action, so if you’re plan­ning some­thing pub­lic and want to let the nation­al press know about it, please send us the details. We’ll also do a press release on the day, so email us or bet­ter yet phone 07961 917535 to be includ­ed in the nation­al action round-up (and put it on Indy­media and here too of course!)

Orig­i­nal call out here